The present invention relates to a Ni-base superalloy and a gas turbine blade made of cast Ni-base superalloy.
In power engines such as jet engines, land-based gas turbines, etc., turbine inlet temperatures are being elevated more and more so as to increase efficiency of the turbines. Therefore, it is one of the most important objects to develop turbine blades material that withstands high temperatures.
The main properties required for turbine blades are high creep rupture strength, high ductility, superior resistance to oxidation in high temperature combustion gas atmosphere and high corrosion resistance. In order to satisfy these properties, nickel base superalloys are used as turbine blade materials at present.
There are conventional cast alloys, unidirectional solidification alloys of columnar grains and single crystal nickel base alloys as nickel base superalloys. Among these, conventional cast alloys have the highest casting yield of the blades. Thus, the technique is appropriate for manufacturing land-based gas turbine blades. See Japanese Patent Laid-open Hei 6 (1994)-57359. However, the normal cast steel is still insufficient in its high temperature creep rupture strength. Thus, there have not been proposed alloys that have high temperature creep rupture strength, corrosion resistance and oxidation resistance.
There are single crystal alloys or unidirectional solidification alloys that have superior creep rupture strength, but these alloys contain a smaller chromium content and contain larger amounts of tungsten and tantalum which have high solid solution strengthening so as to improve creep rupture strength. Therefore, these alloys are insufficient in corrosion resistance at high temperatures. From the viewpoint of corrosion resistance, these alloys that contain relatively large amount of impurities are not suitable for land based gas turbines.
An object of the present invention is to provide a nickel base superalloy for normal casting or unidirectional casting, which has improved high temperature creep rupture strength, oxidation resistance and corrosion resistance, and also provide a gas turbine blade made of the alloy.